A Claire Story
by butterfly starr1
Summary: When Claire's best friend leaves her to become best friends with another girl, Claire is forced to become her own person and make everyone see her as a someone completely different than Kate and who she used to be.


A Claire Story  
  
Disclaimer: I own nothing  
  
I thought it was time for me to finally write the story about Claire that I said I would. In this story, everyone's in ninth grade and 14-ish 15-ish. Claire is 14.  
  
***  
  
"You slut!" she spat at me. "I hate you! You came here in the sixth grade, and I was actually nice to you! I MADE you, and you do this to me! Not did you make top of the pyramid on the cheerleading squad, but now you have to steal Alex, the cutest guy in the tenth grade, who was obviously gonna ask me out until you got your witchy claws on him!"  
  
"But-" I started.  
  
But I stopped when I saw the look on her face. She glared at me with nothing but pure hate in her eyes, and all over her face you could see she truly hated me. She spun on her heels and ran out the front door, slamming it behind her. I opened the door to call after her, but she was already running down the street.  
  
She didn't even give me a chance to tell her I had turned Alex down because I knew she liked him.  
  
And that's how I lost my best friend, Kate.  
  
***  
  
Because I had hung out with Kate so long, people had begun to see us as the same person. What I mean by that is, they thought we were exactly alike, in attitude. And everyone saw Kate as mean. But she's the one who when I moved to Hillridge, invited me to sit at her table at lunch. She's the one who taught me that neon green and purple don't match. But, she DID NOT make me who I am.  
  
As Kate ran down the street from my house, I felt a mixture of happiness and sadness. Sadness because, of course, Kate was my best friend, my other half. But a strange sort of happiness because as I watched her run as fast as she could away from me, I knew that my other half that had been weighing me down, not letting people see me for who I really was and am, was gone.  
  
***  
  
".will be paired with Nicole Tyler, Jamie Smith will be paired with Kenny Chi.." my language arts teacher, Mrs. Reever, droned on. ".And Claire Miller will be paired with David Gordon."  
  
I turned around in my seat and looked at Gordo, but he was writing something down on a sheet of paper and didn't look up at me.  
  
I had been sitting at the 'ESL table', a mean sort of nickname for the table where all the kids from other countries sat, everyday at lunch since Kate, well, dumped me. English as a Second Language doesn't apply to me though, because English is my first and Spanish is my second, thanks to my half Mexican, half Dominican dad. No one else really talked to me, and I guessed that they saw me as some sort of Kate reject.  
  
I sighed and turned around. Those days, the only people who would speak to me are those who didn't speak English.  
  
***  
  
Kate and Lizzie, or Beth as she goes by now, were walking down the hallway side by side, laughing and talking loudly about people's clothes. Kate walked past me and didn't even look at me, or in my direction at all, but I know she knew I was there. But Lizzie/Beth looked at me and smiled. Not a nice smile at all, but a smile that said 'I have what used to be yours'.  
  
Lizzie had given up Miranda and Gordo in a blink of an eye as soon as Kate needed a new best friend. She tried out and made the cheerleading squad (taking my position since I had quit), changed the way she looked dressed completely, dying her hair an even blonder blonde, changed the way she acted. and changing her name to Beth.  
  
Miranda and Gordo still hung out, and I think got even closer as a result of Lizzie leaving them and becoming Beth. But I had a lot of time on my hands as a result of not really having any more friends, beside the ESL table people, and I watched Gordo and Miranda. They were close, but I didn't think that they like-liked each other.  
  
I ran into language arts and slipped into my new seat beside Gordo one second before the bell rang.  
  
"Hey," I said as Mrs. Reever began to check around the room for attendance. "So, do you know anything about Spain?"  
  
The project was to research a certain element of an assigned country, and write a five-page paper on it.  
  
"No, do you?" he said, not paying to much attention to me.  
  
"Nah," I said, attempting a smile "Well, I guess we should get to work on it then."  
  
"Yeah, I guess so." he replied smiling and sounding surprised, I guess because I was being friendly.  
  
"Where do we start?" I asked him, this time giving a real smile.  
  
"I have no clue." He said, sounding happy.  
  
And we both burst out laughing over something that really wasn't all that funny.  
  
*** 


End file.
